PhD for Innovation at Bergen Summer Research School 2022

At the 2022 Bergen Summer Research School, we facilitated the joint sessions on “Systems thinking and creative interdisciplinary problem-solving and project management” with participants from all six summer school courses (some 100 in total).

The theme of the 2022 Bergen Summer Research School was “Understanding and addressing inequality”. During our interdisciplinary sessions, we collaborated with UNICEF.

The challenge for our participants was to envision policies to address individual citizens, institutional managers, national politicians and private sector executives – bringing together material and immaterial resources that must be recognized and covered to give every person the possibility of living up to their potential, starting with a satisfaction of their basic needs.

These policies were to be formulated in the form of a policy brief. Specifically, participants were asked to shape policy recommendations that

• Embrace each dimension (individual, family, society, planet);
• Allow a gradual implementation by international organisations (i.e.UNICEF);
• Are underpinned by the understanding that individual wellbeing is the cause and consequence of collective wellbeing.

The entire summer school was held online, and so were our interactive sessions. For the hands-on experience with systems mapping, this meant, for example, that we had to recruit 10 facilitators who conducted online mapping sessions with some 10 participants each. Here are some sample maps that were created during these sessions.

Time was, as always, short and the task challenging. However, our wonderful participants rose to the occasion and delivered a total of 10 Bergen Summer Research School policy briefs.

• Team 1: A holistic approach to child welfare in addressing the root causes of child labour
• Team 2: Ensuring Children’s Wellbeing: A Special Focus on the Poverty Issue of Rohingya Refugee Community in Bangladesh
• Team 3: Influencing Inequality through Immunization
• Team 4: Target Female Access to Education to Reduce Childhood Poverty
• Team 5: Equitable access to quality education in Nairobi, Kenya
• Team 6: Policy Recommendations Addressing Child Povertyin Indonesia with a Focus on Education
• Team 7: Tackling the burden of Malnutrition arising from child poverty in LMICs. A holistic approach
• Team 8: Increasing Immunization in the Sub-Saharan Countries
• Team 9: Poverty, Children, and the Use of Information and Communications Technology
• Team 10: Reducing child poverty through child education